The Fellowship Begins

Since I haven’t been getting any games in, I’ve been focusing on hobbying which truthfully is my favorite part of all this.  As you’ll see in the coming weeks, I bounce around between various projects to make sure I don’t get tired of painting any one particular thing.  It takes longer to get the minis needed for a scenario done but I never get burnt out on painting which is definitely a good thing.  With that in mind, I started painting some minis that I have no immediate need for but I needed a break from the Trolls and more involved models.

While I don’t have the Fellowship Journey Book currently, I would love to play the scenarios in there one day.  With that in mind, I thought I’d try my hand at Sam and Pippin.  Sam has a ton of details on the back and generally took a long time to paint.  I am happy with how he turned out.  The original Fellowship Sam is certainly a great sculpt.

Pippin allowed me use a bit freehand on his scarf and came together pretty smoothly.  I had trouble getting his eyes a little smaller which is my only frustration with that particular miniature.  I’m pretty proud of how the cloak looks however.

Bilbo has some really fine details in the face that are hard to paint.  It is easy to overdo the shading.  He also has a ring in his hand which is absolutely tiny.  I picked it out but you can even really see it in the sadly photos.  Bilbo is used in a scenario where he leaves The Shire to go Rivendell that I definitely want to try out one day when I build up my collection a bit more but at least the old Hobbit is ready for an adventure when that time comes.

That would be enough for a successful hobby post but wait, there’s more!  More recently I surprised myself and worked on a Hunter Orc on Fell Warg.  This is the third one I’ve done so far and well, there’s still 9 to go for the Unexpected Journey scenarios…  They take a bit of time to paint because the Warg has a lot of detail and requires glazing to make the fur look nice.  The orcs are chockful of detail and you really go to town painting different colors too.  I chose a skin color that looks fantastic but possibly a little bit too much like Uruk Hai (whoops).  I love doing the freehand warpaint as well.  It really takes the mini to another level.

After getting this guy done, I can safely say that he is my best so far and I wish that I could do a few things over on the previous two.  Oh well.  I’ll just have to try to paint the rest of them to the standard I set with this one.